Show HN: A narrative style podcast about DevOps, Kubernetes and Cloud Native - <AUTHOR> Hi HN!
My name is Aymen, and I'm here with Kenichi. Some years ago, I launched a side project. A newsletter called DevOpsLinks, then a 2nd newsletter (Shipped), then a third one (Kaptain). These 3 newsletters are now part of a bigger project that I called FAUN (https://faun.dev). We have newsletters, a Slack team chat, and a job board, but I had a feeling that something is missing... it's a podcast, right :)
Last year, I discussed the idea of creating a podcast with a member of FAUN (who is Kenichi btw), but we were not really ready. That's why it took us some months to start working on it. A few weeks ago, we released our first episode, then the second, and so on... The upcoming episode is the 7th.
We made an unobtrusive launch simply because we were somehow testing the idea, but since we received positive feedback from many of the community members, we decided to talk about it in HN, share it with you, and, if possible, have your feedback. It will really help us!
The podcast is called The DevOps Fauncast (https://faun.dev/podcast), and it has a narrative style, we try to focus on both people and technologies, and if you listen to it, you'll realize that it's different from other podcasts.
We published 6 episodes, and we discussed many topics like the first crisis in software engineering, agile methodologies, DevOps, the story of computing "From Abacus to Containers",  the history of containerization,  Kubernetes, observability, the 4 golden signals, SLI, SLO...
I learned many things when working on this podcast, most importantly I realized how much time and effort a podcast can take.
> Please listen to it. If you think you can learn interesting things from what we do, then subscribe (https://faun.dev/podcast), and if you want to support us, you can do it by:
1) Spreading the word on social media 2) Sharing your feedback with us here: https://eon01.typeform.com/to/OlwI0SbS (It takes 5 sec).
Hope to see you there! <comment><USER2> Hi I'm Kenichi Please do send us your feedback. It will greatly help us calibrate the direction of the podcast

Thank you All</comment>


Ask HN: what Twitter apps do you use regularly or recommend? - <AUTHOR>

There are so many Twitter apps, including mashups that it can be hard to keep up with what's out and what's good.<p>What do you use and what would you suggest we check out? <comment><USER2> I use Hootsuite, instead of Adobe's TweetDeck, because it's a web-based app and I'm a pointy clicky type of person.

I don't have an iPhone, but if I did I'd use Tweetie.

It really depends on how you use Twitter, but Mashable have a great guide include a list of their picks of best apps. <http://mashable.com/guidebook/twitter/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Tweetie desktop and iPhone. I rarely use Tweetdeck but have it on my computer. Take a look at Hootsuite for web.

</comment><comment><USER4> Personal Use: Tweetie desktop and iPhone. Business Use: Tweetdeck.

From time to time I use Seesmic web.</comment>


Facebook lets beheading clips return to social network - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24608499

<comment><USER2> Facebook is being fucking idiotic here.

Having been criticised for banning images of breast-feeding mothers (because NIPPLES) they then do something weird like allowing these clips.

Available at the usual places are short, easy to post gifs of various gore, including US soldiers being shot in the head. Will Facebook really want to allow people to post those images?

What about happy slapping?</comment>


Node.native - Node.js in C++0x - johnx123-up https://github.com/d5/node.native

<comment> johnx123-up Other projects around libuv:

1\. Mozilla's Rust <http://www.rust-lang.org/>

2\. Tim Caswell's LuaNode <https://github.com/ignacio/LuaNode>

3\. Ben Noordhuis and Bert Belder's Phode async PHP project <https://github.com/bnoordhuis/phode>

4\. Kerry Snyder's libuv-csharp <https://github.com/kersny/libuv-csharp>

5\. Andrea Lattuada's web server <https://gist.github.com/1195428>

6\. Steve Yen's Lua wrapper <https://github.com/steveyen/uv>

Source <http://blog.nodejs.org/2011/09/23/libuv-status-report/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice list, though that's not Tim Caswell's project; this is: <https://github.com/luvit/luvit>

<comment><USER2> Using Moonscript (Lua's CoffeeScript) the performance benefit of LuaJIT when compared to all JavaScript implementations makes it a really interesting.

Well, actually Lua doesn't look bad, even though it really needs syntactic sugar for OO, but there is enough of it. Not just Moonscript, but also Loose (Perl's Moose ported to Lua).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is quite similar to boost.asio library, which has got sockets and timers. I know for a fact that boost.asio is thread safe and you can use several threads running the same I/O service allowing you to multiplex n sockets to m threads. Do you guys know whether libuv (and node.native) are thread safe or not?

<comment><USER4> No kidding, asio is fast and battle-tested. I only see risks associated with being an early adopter this. The Node hype is a deafening roar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a little off topic, but thought I'd ask the C++11 aficionados who're viewing this thread. For those who've taken the hit and really explored C++11:

1) What are the best resources to learn how to code C++11 in a Pythonic style? Looking for a book or production source code example that uses the new language features idiomatically: lambdas, vector and dictionary literals, and the like.

2) What does your toolchain look like for C++11? Just the latest gcc and latest emacs, plus maybe a few tools like makeheaders[1] and gtags[2], or something more?

[1] <http://www.hwaci.com/sw/mkhdr/>

[2] <http://www.gnu.org/software/global/>

<comment><USER3> 1) What are the best resources to learn how to code C++11 in a Pythonic style? Looking for a book or production source code example that uses the new language features idiomatically: lambdas, vector and dictionary literals, and the like.

I don't think you can find good books or comprehensive resources at this time. There are various articles and blog posts detailing the C++11 additions to the language. Of course there's the spec but it makes very boring reading.

Not a whole lot has changed so you can pretty much jump right in and use the new features as you need them.

std::thread and std::chrono are pretty sweet.

2) What does your toolchain look like for C++11? Just the latest gcc and latest emacs, plus maybe a few tools like makeheaders[1] and gtags[2], or something more?

I used to build gcc from git sources, but these days my operating system package manager ships with a gcc version that has most of the C++11 stuff I use. Just add -std=gnu++0x to your CFLAGS.

FWIW: I use vim + ctags + cscope.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> A cool hack, but I can't help this feeling pointless in practice.

It solves the problem of using Node userland code to do heavy computation. But

a) serious developers know better than to do heavy computation inside of Node anyway, and

b) it comes at an enormous, almost unforgivable cost: working with C++ is a nightmare compared to working with Node when it comes to realtime web projects (I've been in those trenches)

What would be exponentially more useful in practice is a concise, well- documented way to hook (multithreaded) C++ code into Node's engine.

But that wouldn't be nearly as sexy as a promise of _Node, but with native performance_.

<comment><USER7> Without commenting on Node.native, I'd just like to note that C++11 isn't your grandparents' C++ anymore. An experienced programmer probably can write code in C++11 that is almost as elegant as, say, the equivalent C# code. And for larger projects many people would prefer something like C# to JavaScript, if only for the static typing.

<comment><USER8> the problem isn't writing code, the problem is build environment and deployment - correct versions of compilers, headers, libraries, makefiles, cmakelists, wafs, scons', bjams, whatevers...

<comment><USER9> Is it really an issue? Are you proud of the fact that you can't sudo apt-get a few packages?

I'm not a fan of moving away from Makefiles, however. Makefiles are sooo simple, why complicate it?

<comment><USER10> Makefiles are only simple if you are only supporting a single operating system, and a few build configurations.

<comment><USER11> I've worked on a makefile that built shaders, libs, and assorted executables for multiple projects across 6 platforms, and I can confirm this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> What is the dramatic advantage of Node.native over using libev/libevent directly?

<comment><USER6> Familiar interface, good pre-packaged core libraries.

That's about it.

<comment><USER13> familiar interface for whom?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I would like to understand the implications. Does this improve performance? Or does it just allow coding in C++.

Please help. (Sorry, noob here.)

<comment><USER3> > I would like to understand the implications. Does this improve performance? > Or does it just allow coding in C++.

This is practically a C++ wrapper for libuv, the backend of node.js. It allows you to write code similar to node.js in C++ without using JavaScript and the V8 JavaScript environment. Does it improve performance? In theory, yes. In practice, maybe.

The biggest potential win here is that you could run many threads that can run I/O in parallel. In Node.js/V8 you only have one native OS thread while in C++ you can put many native threads to serve the I/O sockets. It's quite a lot cheaper to change from one thread to another than it is to change from one process to another (if you have many node.js processes running) so there is potential for performance increases if you have some CPU-heavy stuff in your code. Or you have more sockets/requests to serve than a single CPU is capable of.

This is assuming that libuv and node.native don't have anything that would inhibit running in multiple threads. The system calls running underneath (read, write, epoll/kqueue) are thread safe, but libuv/node.native may have something that isn't. I didn't double-check.

<comment> johnx123-up (I submitted the link, but...) Do you think a C port will improve performance over C++? Google only returns wishlist something like this <http://rajeshanbiah.blogspot.in/2012/01/nodec-la-nodejs.html>

<comment><USER9> A properly coded C++ app should run as fast as C; it can be faster...

<comment><USER15> Not while C++ doesn't have restrict pointers

<comment><USER9> Yeah, all performance benefits of C come from a single under used feature. </sarcasm>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Great to see libuv being used in the wild (outside of Node.js). It's a nice little library that does one thing and does it good.

<comment><USER17> FWIW it's also used in the Rust runtime (<https://github.com/mozilla/rust/tree/master/src>)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> It might be useful to use node-like patterns in platforms where node is not available (iOS comes to mind).

</comment><comment><USER19> Wow, great work. Really good for both CPU and IO critical missions (a.k.a people who are cheap on servers)

</comment><comment><USER20> I'd kill to have this in Go instead. Looks like it's a wrapper around libuv, shouldn't be hard with cgo. Hm, maybe another thing to add to the list.

edit: it appears that I'm confused as to what this does exactly, my bad. Egg, all over my face.

<comment><USER3> Doesn't Go have it's own asynchronous I/O system built into the language runtime? I was under the impression that Go has I/O multiplexing w/green threads similar to Haskell. So when you write socket.read(), it will be put into an epoll/kqueue behind the scenes and a co-operative green thread switch occurs. This way you don't have to write dirty I/O callbacks like in Node.js or Boost.Asio but you get the same effect with neater code.

So if Go has this feature, using libuv would not only be useless, it would be harmful because it doesn't play nice with the language runtime w.r.t. parallelism.

I think that writing asynchronous parallel code should be done by the compiler and the runtime, not by the coder. Node.js code is a mess of callbacks that have to be written in continuation passing style by the user. Haskell (or Go?) code that has the same effect is written like regular imperative code, which is transformed into Node-style callback code by the compiler and multiplexed by the runtime. Compilers are excellent in doing this kind of transformations.

<comment><USER21> Almost, but not quite.

From <http://golang.org/doc/effective_go.html#goroutines>: "Goroutines are multiplexed onto multiple OS threads so if one should block, such as while waiting for I/O, others continue to run."

So the Go runtime doesn't automagically transform blocking system calls into non-blocking calls, but if one goroutine is waiting for I/O, other goroutines can run in the meantime.

But you're right in that with Go you can write simple, easy to debug imperative code, but at the same time confidently spawn 10's of thousands of goroutines because they're so lightweight compared to conventional OS threads. The Go runtime handles the bookkeeping of multiplexing goroutines over real OS threads.

<comment><USER3> > So the Go runtime doesn't automagically transform blocking system calls into > non-blocking calls, but if one goroutine is waiting for I/O, other > goroutines can run in the meantime.

But when using Go's standard file.read or socket.write, what you get is I/O multiplexing of goroutines (with epoll or kqueue) in the runtime.

Naturally, if you call a C library from Go that uses unix read or write and executes a blocking system call, that cannot be magically intercepted by the Go runtime.

<comment><USER22> ...what? All file.Read does is wrap the read syscall. There's no concurrency in file.Read.

<comment><USER3> It seems like goroutines in Go don't do as much asynchronous stuff as Haskell's I/O manager and green threads do. Looking at Go sources, there is some async stuff w/epoll in the net library with sockets, but file.Read is indeed just a plain syscall.

It makes me wonder, what happens to a goroutine when a system call blocks. Go is supposed to mux many goroutines to a smaller number of OS threads, but what happens when one of those threads has been blocked in a system call?

There are plenty of vague descriptions on how goroutines work but none of the ones I found quickly explained what happens on a blocking system call that allows another goroutine to run, apart from hand-waving about "another goroutine running".

<comment><USER23> The Go runtime keeps track of the number of goroutines that are currently executing and ensures that this doesn't go above GOMAXPROCS. As soon as a goroutine enters a system call it is excluded from this count. If there aren't enough threads to run GOMAXPROCS goroutines the runtime may launch a new one.

See pkg/runtime/proc.c (entersyscall, ready, and matchmg).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: I am lazy and cannot focus but I really want to learn new things - <AUTHOR>

I think i might have a bit of ADD.
I cannot concentrate on one thing for too long.  For instance: I was busy doing an iOS self study course , then jumped to an asp.net MVC course and now i am writing this question to HN.
ANY suggestions on how to focus on one thing at a time? I keep getting frustrated with my self due to the fact that nothing ever gets done. Thanks <comment><USER2> I often hesitate to chime in on a discussion like this, because my response is based on Myers-Briggs Type Indicators, and a surprisingly large number of people consider the MBTI as useless and lacking scientific foundation.

Regardless, here is my response to someone making this exact same complaint on reddit:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/INTP/comments/sqhxw/motivation_and_o...](http://www.reddit.com/r/INTP/comments/sqhxw/motivation_and_overcoming_laziness/c4ggasm)

I always recommend that everyone find out their personality type by taking one of these MBTI-like tests. I see too many of these posts that have people feeling down on themselves for reasons that amount to not understanding who they are and what the benefits and challenges of it are. I can recommend the following:

www.careertest.net <http://humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes1.htm> <http://similarminds.com/jung.html>

</comment><comment> why-el Here is my take on this: Do not develop a guilt-driven attitude towards reading. What I mean by that is, don't feel pressured to finish something you started just because you started it. When you stopped that iOs course, that was clearly because you weren't interested, so don't feel guilty for doing that. Even when you keep quitting reading, it is almost always because you are not interested and nothing else. I have had the same issue for months, going from this book to that book to that other book and so on. But when I was new to Git and was interested, I finished two books in a week. Another thing I should warn you about: When making first contact with a new topic that you are interested in, make sure you read enough to pass the _newbie line_. If you quit a book in the middle of basics, you will feel pressured to start over when picking another book on the same topic, hence stuck in a newbie loop. Happened to me lots of times.

</comment><comment><USER3> You need awareness. Stop comparing yourself with other people and learn what you want in your own way.

"Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid." Albert Einstein

</comment><comment><USER4> I was diagnosed with ADD as a kid. It turns out I was just bored. There are only 2 reasons for jumping around like this. Either you aren't that interested or you hit a knowledge roadblock.

The knowledge roadblock is probably the easier of the two to overcome. Join a local users group. My learning was highly stunted until I had people around me that could answer my (frequently dumb) questions face to face. Sites like stack overflow are great but they are no substitute for someone who can see the look on your face that you aren't getting it and change course accordingly.

Is building iOS apps something you really really really want to do or something that would be cool to know? Learning new things usually starts by sucking pretty hard. When the interest level dips below the difficulty level it is easy to move on to the next thing. If your interest level isn't really high to start it is going to be easy to jump from thing to thing.

A general productivity tip is have a clear objective, a fixed time and write it down in a place where you are going to see it. Attach a reward to getting it done and a penalty for failing to complete the task. Finally have someone to hold you accountable. When the pain of not getting it done is worse than the pain of doing it you will get it done.

</comment><comment><USER5> Happens to me all the time. Here's my self diagnosis:

1\. If I'm restless, I need to get excess energy out of my system. I run in the park. Do whatever works for you: gym, sports, bikes etc.

2\. Try meditation to calm your mind.

Ugh what's this new age meditation crap?

It's nothing. Its a practice where you sit (or stand, walk, sleep, shower or whatever) and you consciously try to stop thinking and instead feel whatever sensations you're experiencing.

Ugh, is that all?

Yes, and its the hardest job in the world. You mind will wander away in seconds, and your job is to be aware of your mind wandering and then bring it back to stop thinking.

Eventually you'll become more calm, perceptive and you won't need any drugs to cure the "ADD".

</comment><comment><USER6> You need a learning partner that will hold you accountable. Self study courses are a horrible fit for you, and traditional education is a great fit. Find a "hack night" and make a learning buddy, or enroll in programming classes at a local community college.

</comment><comment><USER7> Echoing other comments: set small goals. I used to make grand plans about spending 50 hours a week self-studying 10 different subjects. Unsurprisingly, I didn't get anything done.

So, instead, set small goals and work your way up. Personal example: I'm learning Spanish. Instead of spending 5 hours a day learning, I'm trying to do one Pimsleur lesson a day. (It's an audio learning program). It's only 30 minutes, and I'm on a 6-day run. Pretty easy, and I don't want to break the chain, so I end up doing it. 30 minutes a day, every day is better than a few hours here and there.

</comment><comment><USER8> Headphones, music and write code ? Then write code, write some more code and then rewrite that code ? Basically, code.

Procrastination is often a sign of not being interested in the topic.

</comment><comment><USER9> Yep, they are a lot of us like that, each trying to deal with it in their own way. I think it's the nature of our occupation: staring at a computer screen for hours is probably not the most natural thing ever. I really like factorialboy comments about meditation. For my part I've had a look at <http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/>, looks like it's working pretty well for me, simply taking short break between short working sessions.

</comment><comment><USER10> Set small goals. Keep a journal (or a list) of your accomplishments, no matter how small. Set a timer and use it to keep yourself on track for even small amounts of time at first (i.e., for the next 10 minutes I will do ...). Good luck. In the Internet era we are all suffering from too much distraction to one extent or another. You are no different than most (although perhaps more aware than some).

</comment><comment><USER11> I have the same problem (with no solution) I'm very interested to see what other people have to say.

</comment><comment><USER12> You might just be young, and that's okay. Set small goals for yourself, and work on finishing them. Work your way up to larger goals.

</comment><comment><USER13> People might disagree with this but try adderall XR in moderation.

(I am not a doctor or even a very smart person)

</comment><comment><USER14> There is some controversial study claiming that ADD might be linked to glutene/carbohydrate food intake.

</comment><comment><USER15> Amidst all the rest, do not ignore your physical health issues. I had some physical health problems seriously impede my concentration. Specifically, chronic discomfort kept me from entering that state of "flow" that previously had represented the majority of my productivity (and happiness, by the way).

</comment><comment><USER16> It happens to me all the time both with business ideas and the learning of things I am interested in. I started learning Django framework for python, did a small user management app but did not like it much, moved on the web2py framework, built a couple of small CRUD apps, did not like it much, then moved to Flask framework (currently playing with). Sometimes, I dabble between JQuery, CSS etc. bits and pieces. here and there. nothing concrete yet but if I really think about it, it makes me happy. Focus on a specific item instead of a more generic item. Instead of thinking "I will do a iOS self study course", say "I will build this x function by building a small iOS app". When you try to build that small app, you will learn many things on the way.</comment>


Keith and Mario's Guide to Continuous Deployment - <AUTHOR> https://speakerdeck.com/keithpitt/keith-and-marios-guide-to-continuous-deployment

<comment><USER2> This talk was one of the highlights of RubyConf Au. Thanks guys.

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad you liked it :D <3

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Always Be Continuously Deploying :+1:</comment>


Continuous Integration - <AUTHOR> http://www.thoughtworks.com/continuous-integration

<comment><USER2> As a build/configuration management specialist, I'm boggled that continuous integration is STILL a controversial subject, and that so many developers have never been exposed to it.

But, such is the sad state of our industry.

<comment><USER3> I think much of the controversy has been made far too abstract, allowing differences of semantics and emphasis to create unnecessary disagreement. Most of these debates are endlessly frustrating, and the only productive discussions I've seen have been very concrete about a specific product or decision.

<comment><USER2> I'm thinking about in the enterprise, not on the internet. I've seen supposedly adult engineers argue that establishing a repeatable build process will slow them down or cause the sun to set in the east or some such nonsense. And those are the senior people. There are a zillion junior programmers out there who have never discovered there are ways to build Java apps that aren't exporting a war file from Eclipse. :(</comment></comment></comment>


Decimal: A high-performance, arbitrary-precision, floating-point decimal library - <AUTHOR> https://godoc.org/github.com/ericlagergren/decimal <comment><USER2> Interesting! This appears to be implementing Decimal32, Decimal64, and Decimal128 [1].

It's worth remembering that the "first" computer, the ENIAC, used decimal arithmetic. A decimal arithmetic package was one of the first things I wrote for my Z-80 homecomputer as I couldn't imagine anyone working with money using binary floating point! [2] That said, isn't Fintech mostly using scaled integers these days?

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal32_floating- point_forma...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal32_floating-point_format) [2] My horror was refreshed recently when I compared various mortgage calculators on the web. Not two of them got the exact same amortization schedule :( :(

</comment><comment><USER3> The documentation says this adheres to the `math/big` API in some respects - can someone speak to what differentiates this from `math/big`?

<comment><USER4> It deals with floating-point, arbitrary-precision decimal numbers, whereas math/big contains support for arbitrary-precision integers, rationals and binary floating point. Looking at it briefly, it looks like it uses math/big under the hood when the numbers are large, but uses an internal compact form for efficiency when numbers are small ~<= 20 decimal digits.

<comment><USER5> Yep! That's what it does. Hopefully I can get it moved over to BCD which will drop basic arithmetic performance, but more than make up for it when faster rounding. :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> (Related topic) Since this might gather eyeballs that would like to see decimal support in JS, I'd be interested to hear more details about use cases people have for this Go package as well as potential use cases / interop in JS.

</comment><comment><USER7> As a plug for another arbitrary-precision, floating-point decimal library in Go, there's [https://github.com/cockroachdb/apd](https://github.com/cockroachdb/apd).

</comment><comment><USER8> Original URL was [https://github.com/ericlagergren/decimal](https://github.com/ericlagergren/decimal), but the doc page has more info.

</comment><comment><USER9> Odd. I had to spend 5 minutes convincing myself from the site (which uses the same wording) that it was actually a 'decimal floating point' library, as I've never heard such a thing called a 'floating point decimal'.</comment>


Show HN: Theimage.io, an image sharing website with only one image - <AUTHOR> http://theimage.io/ <comment><USER2> Interesting, but I worry about the site being abused with 'shock images' and such...

Are the previous images sent to /dev/null or are they kept for future reference?

<comment><AUTHOR> I can switch on access to previous images if I ever need it.

I don't believe the potential for shock images is any higher than any content sharing platform, especially small ones without much in terms of content recommendation. It at least has the advantage of being self-moderating and extremely temporary.</comment></comment>


Surprisingly Simple Anti-Dark-Patterns That Build Trust in Ecommerce and SaaS - <AUTHOR> https://capitalandgrowth.org/answers/Article/3202235/Surprisingly-Simple-Anti-Dark-Patterns-that-Build-Trust-in-Ecommerce-and-Saas <comment><USER2> This website is one big dark pattern and it severely detracts from the article.

\- Full screen popover when you scroll to the top

\- Useless socialmedia "sharing" toolbar covers the text. Like I really need that stuff close to hand at any moment while reading.

\- To downvote "was this article helpful" due to the above, you have to login with social media or create an account. No thanks, if you're resorting to scummy tactics like the above you're not getting any of my data.

<comment><AUTHOR> Op here: We will fix the social media bar and ask AnswerBase (the publishing platform we use) to not require a login to upvote or downvote. But hey, you had to login to participate on HN. Not that big a deal!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Anti-Dark-Patterns is certainly an interesting way to put it... why not trust building patterns?</comment>


Choosing the Private Cloud for secure file syncing - <AUTHOR> http://blog.aerofs.com/choosing-the-private-cloud-for-secure-file-syncing/

<comment><USER2> Or you could choose an open-source tool like syncthing ([http://syncthing.net](http://syncthing.net)) or clearskies ([https://github.com/jewel/clearskies](https://github.com/jewel/clearskies)) or turtl ([https://turtl.it](https://turtl.it))

<comment><USER3> My biggest fear is some tool/technology/protocol which is not well-tested destroying my data and all copies. My second biggest fear is that thing being closed source.

<comment><USER2> Snapshots + rdiff will get you the reassurance you want.

<comment><USER3> I actually have 2 ZFS based arrays in different locations, rsync-ing happily but... let's say I really like my data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> In the interests of full disclosure, I'm a happy AeroFS user; we use it to sync normal corp files plus also larger files (.isos and VM images) across a small number of users and a larger number of workstations. It was a little annoying in the past having to get Mac Java to work, but now that everything is bundled I don't have any major complaints.

It's pretty much my go-to answer for small team file syncing. It probably doesn't make sense for individual users unless they're technically sophisticated with a lot of computers. For larger enterprise use, no one has yet asked me to set up file sharing, but AeroFS would be a top option I'd consider.

The biggest problem with AeroFS now is that there isn't a whole lot of adoption on the mobile API, so mobile apps tend to support Dropbox, iCloud, and maybe Box (if enterprise focused), but not "save to AeroFS".

<comment><USER5> What do you recommend for individual users with 3-5 desktops/laptops and 2 iOS devices?

Note for the unclued: rdl is the author of the linked article.

<comment><USER4> If you need in-app syncing on iOS, Dropbox -- just be aware of the security limitations. iCloud has serious issues if you're not all-Apple, and moderate issues if you are all-Apple.

SpiderOak might be a good option, although there (like AeroFS) isn't much integration with iOS apps yet. Their security model and general thinking is probably the best of the public options. (Tahoe-LAFS is interesting too, but not really ready for prime time; it's a lot more like AeroFS in design with commercial providers added on.)

I still use Google Docs/Drive to share collaboratively-edited files with some people, and iCloud for iOS device backups, so I think the answer is there isn't a single answer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My solution to cloud storage has always been encryption. TrueCrypt, Boxcryptor, gpg with a frontend, etc.

If your files are properly encrypted you can safely store them anywhere you like, using whatever technology that best fits your usage scenario.

</comment><comment><USER7> Full discloser: I'm a founder at Cloudtenna.

AeroFS is a great option for file-syncing. Compare public file sync (Dropbox), private file sync (AeroFS), and traditional network file shares (CIFS/NFS).

Can you risk files in the public cloud? If no, you're limited to just private file sync and traditional network shares. And this is where AeroFS can shine.

You may already have a network share. Its secure. But its a pain to access remotely (VPN) and mobile devices are not compatible at all. So you may choose to migrate your files into an AeroFS Private Cloud so you can sync files instead of browsing files via the network. Syncing files to your desktop gives you offline/remote access.

I'd argue the most secure option is probably leaving data where it already is. If you already have a file server, with permissions and such thats already vetted secure. Cloudtenna adds mobile file access to your on-prem file server. No need to migrate files to a new storage platform.

My blatant pitch aside, AeroFS is right solution if you want to replace mounted network file shares with file sync. Cloudtenna, instead, is good for adding the web/mobile access features of Dropbox to your existing network shares.

</comment><comment><USER8> Maybe not entirely the same, but I'm a happy user of BitTorrent Sync ([https://bittorrent.com/](https://bittorrent.com/)), it keeps all my machines in Sync flawlessly (Windows, Macs, iDevices ...) There's even a client for Synology, so you could create some folder on your NAS and sync it with your devices .

<comment><USER9> Yeah I have to second BitTorrent Sync.

It really shows that they have experience transferring big files over the internet (via P2P). With Dropbox I often only get 100-300 kb/s upload, BitTorrent Sync maxes out my connection. Download is a similar story.

And with encrypted secrets the server part is easy too. (Obviously you've got to trust them, but I'm writing this on OS X so...)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Tonido FileCloud (www.getfilecloud.com) is another great option for Secure Private Cloud File Sharing and Sync for Enterprises. The mobile apps are polished and no java client requirement for sync clients. Check it out. You will be glad.</comment>


Are You Following a Bot? - <AUTHOR> http://m.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/05/are-you-following-a-bot/8448/ <comment><USER2> Seems like there's a potential for a (productive?) arms race here: services like Twitter or Facebook might (and presumably already do) algorithmically try to identify fake users. That evolutionary pressure will generate more sophisticated bots...

<comment><USER3> Automatic detection of bots and suspicious behavior is part of what we are trying to do with Truthy

<http://truthy.indiana.edu>

<comment><USER4> Sounds like Blade Runner ;)

<comment><USER5> You're in a desert walking along in the sand, when all of a sudden you look down and you see a tortoise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Could be a real time saver, and of course the definition of a 'bot' can become squishy as in, "I've got an application that tweets as me for some things." Technically a bot, useful as an assistant?

A much more interesting question is the believability. For older folks there seems to be a great willingness to trust what is written on official looking blogs, whereas my kids naturally distrust such blogs, and yet if the folks they are following are all in favor of some trend there is a tendency to see validity in the trend.

Its clearly a more complex subject than I ever gave it credit for before.

</comment><comment><USER7> Over the next 10 years I see us leaving the age of the spammer and entering the age of the bot. By that I mean that bots will become so useful to us that even when we know they are bots we'll still welcome their company.

Turing should see us now. Cool stuff.

<comment><USER8> We are already following the bots, Googlebot in particular.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Frankly I find dedicated bot accounts less objectionable than human accounts where a bot or application is inserting paid commercial messages into the tweet stream, even if they're marked as such. (See adly.com) (Can someone make their twitter client screen all tweets with #ad?)

<comment><USER10> I haven't used this myself, but it looks like it might be something up your alley:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2004254>

<http://proxlet.com/>

My understanding is that it's basically a proxy for Twitter that allows you to filter based on criteria you specify.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I had the opposite experience. I thought I had been following a bot for a while but it turned out to be a real person (her name is Anna).

<comment><USER12> For those who are not familiar: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7iU0GGVco8>

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> "His group has published the code for its experimental bots online, 'to allow people to be aware of the problem and design countermeasures.'"

The code: [http://www.webecologyproject.org/2011/02/complete-source- cod...](http://www.webecologyproject.org/2011/02/complete-source-code-from- socialbots-2011/)

</comment><comment><USER14> I think part of the issue is, does Twitter consider this a violation? As a communications platform successor to e-mail, are machine-generated messages necessarily "bad" simply because they are hijacking a 1:1 channel? And does a broadcast message violate the spirit of Twitter as a comms platform?

</comment><comment><USER15> Yeah, so true!</comment>


China's Leaders Confront an Unlikely Foe: Ardent Young Communists - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/28/world/asia/china-maoists-xi-protests.html <comment><USER2> "The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."

...and someone forgot to adapt the rhethoric.

<comment><USER3> \- Animal Farm by George Orwell (1945)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Delicious irony. Though I doubt China won't be able to deal with them with the help of several to several thousand strategic disappearings.

<comment><USER5> yes they will have to go studying proper capitalistic values

<comment><USER6> _One country, two systems,_ where two varies in value.

The politburo seems to play favorites with capitalism when there is rapid economic and military expansion. It'd be interesting to see how that sentiment changes/changed in a recession.

<comment><USER7> Special economic zones like Shenzhen (Silicon Valleys) vs rural dirt farmers. It's a command and control capitalist system, a weird inversion of the free market economy.

A different lens to view this through is Deng Xiaoping used SEZ to subvert Mao's communist model and steer it back towards capitalism. "It doesn't matter whether a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice." Deng endured severe personal suffering to deliver his vision. Unfortunately Xi is rewinding much of Deng's progress.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> An interesting dilemma, somewhat ironic I might say.

<comment><USER9> Exactly the same thing is happening in the UK, the Labour Party has no idea how to deal with Momentum

<comment><USER10> Momentum aren't communists though, I don't think. They just want to reverse the drift of the party to the right under the leaderships from Blair onwards

<comment><USER9> _Momentum aren 't communists though, I don't think_

I've heard them described as Nationalising Socialists.

<comment><USER10> Where, on breitbart?

<comment><USER9> From people concerned about the increasingly common anti-Semitism in the Labour Party

<comment><USER10> A lot of people feel that is a confection by Zionists, supported by israel, aimed at making criticism of Israeli policies equivalent to anti-semitism.

<comment><USER9> So what you're saying is, allegations of anti-Semitism are in fact a Jewish plot? Do you know how that sounds?

<comment><USER10> Since you've edited your comment belatedly to ask if I know how that sounds, I'll add this answer.

Yes I know exactly how the words you're trying to put in my mouth sound and I know why you are doing it.

<comment><USER9> It was a good faith question to see if you were aware of it, and I see that you in fact are. "Confection by Zionists" indeed. Dog-whistling at its finest.

<comment><USER10> I needed to look up 'dog-whistling' and got this definition on wikipedia :

 _Dog-whistle politics is political messaging employing coded language that appears to mean one thing to the general population but has an additional, different, or more specific resonance for a targeted subgroup._

Please explain how "Confection by Zionists" fits the bill?

<comment><USER9> Well, if I have misjudged you, I apologise for that!

The thing is that Israel is a red herring, the traditional anti-Semitism of the left pre-dates its existence and is rooted in the stereotypical association of Jews with finance and hence capitalism in general. Therefore often Zionist is a code-word meaning simply Jew. Banker is often used in a similar way too. Similarly, members of the far-right say Canadians when they mean black people.

<comment><USER10> Thank you. However Israel is not a red herring in this as far as I am concerned.

I believe that what's going on in the Labour Party is an attempt to stifle criticism of Israel and in particular its treatment of the Palestinians.

I don't know if it's directly related to Israeli Governemnt Minster Erdan's "PR Commando Unit", announced last year. but it sounds very similar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I once sat in on a talk from a Marxist academic who claimed "you think people in China won't be swayed by the communist literature and iconography around them and realize their own state is opposed to those ideals?" It had a similar ringing to the protestant reformation and people in the us (to a lesser extent) who see the contradictions between "America home of the free" and its current state.

<comment><USER6> It might be a dirty truism: utopian promises are for children and the slow, reality requires messy, pragmatic nuances that often break and contradict simplistic, academic "wouldn't it be nice if" or wishes for a perfect, simple solution that is designed and pushed into policy.

One of the most pragmatic, matter-of-fact Marxist economists, R. Wolff, acknowledges the foibles, workarounds and tendencies... how people behave in reality, rather than how _some people should like to make them, or would like, them to_ behave, or that libertarian, unregulated, utopian capitalist economics is some meritocratic magic wand that solves all externalities and inequalities in "the market," usually with "trickle down" economics that never happens. Reality is most definitely none of those things, even though people still try to pretend otherwise, likely for their own benefit.

<comment><USER12> > "trickle down" economics that never happens

Never say never. The problem is that "trickle down" economics happens _to some degree_. This is a problem because it convinces a large number of fence- sitters that all is good, at least compared to the straw-man opposite extreme: that no inequalities would be allowed at all under anything that has 'socialism' in it's name, be it democratic or not.

<comment><USER13> The most amazing thing about "trickle down economics" is that it was never a real economic theory .

It started as a Will Rogers joke. Opponents of Reagan administration started to use it [1]. Then amazing thing happened. Somehow people in the right started to believe that it's actually a thing with solid facts behind it. Then politicians followed. Some economists have even tried to find the effect. It seems not to exist.

[1]: Reagan administration believed in supply-side economics and free markets ad the cause of more economic growth.

<comment><USER14> I don't think it was ever a theory, just an idea.

If BigCorps, who employ a lot of people are healthy and stable, they will invest and grow. Related to supply side economics.

It's not irrational.

BigCos along with banks are at the center of the economy - their leaders have more direct and clear impact that others.

Demand side things like government subsidies are generally a little more indirect, take time, and of course come a long with a bunch of side effects.

2008 was 'trickle down' economics, i.e. 'the banks must survive' and they got some cherry deals.

<comment><USER13> Demand and supply must match. Too much supply creates just excess capacity and reduces the return of investment.

That matching quantity is the size of the economy.

Supply side argued that improving supply will increase demand and grow economy.

In practice the demand side is more often correct, supply side wrong. Demand creates incentives to increase supply, not other way around. Supply side can be correct in some special circumstances for a short time, but not so much that it would be solid macroeconomic policy.

Economy is like a rope. Demand is like pulling the rope. Supply is like pushing the rope.

<comment><USER14> "Demand and supply must match."

They never match match.

In an modern economy demand is created by innovation and marketing, i.e. by creating things like the iPhone, which change all previous consumer expectations, and other innovations change the dynamics of production for other things.

" demand side is more often correct, supply side wrong. .Demand creates incentives to increase supply, not other way around"

No. Printing money, or borrowing it to gin up demand is nothing but a temporary distortion and a waste of everyone's time unless you're trying to 'hold things over' while an economy recovers from some kind of shock (or fix a taxation situation that was whack), moreover, over any period this will just cause inflation and nothing will change in real-dollar terms, other than the temporary misreading of the economy by producers. To be clear: there can be no fundamental and secular shift in demand (and therefore growth) from demand side activities.

There was no 'demand' for electricity until someone figured out electricity and the lightbulb, there was no 'demand' for toasters until someone figured it out. There was no 'demand' for the XMen and Avengers films, until someone created them.

The majority of per-capita growth is predicated on some kind of fundamental innovation be it process, technology, organizational, geopolitical (i.e. trade deals). This is supply side.

Now this doesn't mean we should just go ahead and wipe out corporate taxes yada yada, and that's not to say that strategic investment can't yield longer term action, but that strategic investment would have to be inherently value creating, not just some pure economic shift.

<comment><USER13> We can't have discussion without common vocabulary and common economic concepts that we both understand.

Your are using words like demand and supply general concepts not a specific model of price determination and then arguing freely with them. This is why you don't understand what supply and demand must match means.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm a Marxist, not a Marxist-Leninist or of other ideological factions, but I'm a Marxist in the sense that I read Marx' and Engels' and other people influenced by their ideas and thought their methods of trying understand social phenomenona are interesting and worthwhile. I don't wanna get into flamewars, I hate ideologies and believe at its core Marxism is materialism (which is the philosophical opposite of idealism).

Since China is a very hot topic in HN, and since I'm a software engineer, I want to share my ideas on this issue in a few sentences with my community. China's Communist Party was never about communism but rather about Big-C Communism which is the ideology formed in late 19th century, supposedly influenced by Marx' revolutionary ideas. What Big-C Communism captures is the method in which capitalims is sought to be destroyed, and thus by nature is not dynamic in and of itself. It cannot understand the real material conditions of modern China as it was formed before those conditions were realized. Since the natural process that creates capitalism is value generation and thus commodity production, it's pretty clear who paid attention to Marx that China is as capitalist as USA. I think our discussions would be more rational if we frame "China" discussions in terms of "authoritarianism" and not "communism".

<comment><USER16> For over a century, real, existing Communism has been Marxism-Leninism. That is because Marx's original prediction that capitalism would soon be replaced by socialsm proved mistaken, and so the Marxist political movement split into Social Democrats and Marxist-Leninists.

And then the Communists came to power, not in the advanced industrial countries as Marx had predicted, but instead feudal or semi-feudal ones like Russia and China. As a result the Communists put into effect not socialism, but state capitalism, in order to develop industrially to the stage where they would eventually be ready for socialism, a development that never happened. And then state capitalism bogged down, so China and Russia switched over to crony capitalism. And in China crony capitalism eventually slowed down, and the country became too Western in its values, so Xi Jinping is cracking down and puting things under more state control. I assume you are aware of this whole story.

<comment><USER15> Few things I want to note.

> For over a century, real, existing Communism has been Marxism-Leninism

In what way? There has been dozens of ideological factions calling themselves "Communists" like various types of anarchists, left-communists, Orthodox Marxists etc. More importantly, there was academic Marxism which wasn't revolutionary in its intention, which affected dozens of fields including history and sociology, and had factions too (e.g. Frankfurt School)

> And then the Communists came to power

The rest of your comment makes sense to me but I still want to be cautious to make such claims. In a Marxist sense ideological Communists weren't communists as communists can only be members of the working class willing to rise up against the bourgeoisie. The difference is the category: the Communists who came to power had ideological intentions and not material intentions whereas communism is a by-definition material concept. I believe it's true that maybe parts of Russian revolution started out as a communist revolution but, as you said, given the economic structure of the country (not highly developed) communism was already dead by the time revolution was over. And we can talk endlessly for hours whether Lenin was a good communist or an asshole; but this is irrelevant because communism (just like capitalism) is never about single persons but about classes. When the Russian Revolution started being more about Lenin and less about the people, it was already not communist regardless of the "ideology" of Lenin. Given the history, and how "Communist" is liberally used to attack Marx, it's intellectual laziness or intellectual dishonesty to mention USSR, China or other supposedly "Communist" countries to make an argument about Marx. I read the entire corpus of Marx and he very rarely talks about implementations, and oftentimes they're his very early work (like the Manifesto) or when he's critiquing other ideas on implementation (like the Critique of Gotha's Program). Given all these issues I have, I almost never find a good rational discussion about Marxism on the internet, not in HN, not on "socialist" sites like r/socialism, r/communism etc... It's always entirely about the ideology which is something Marx tried to criticise his whole life. It feels like when teenagers "discuss" Nietzsche and they think he's a nihilist when Nietzsche spent his entire life attacking nihilism.

<comment><USER16> >In what way? There has been dozens of ideological factions calling themselves "Communists" like various types of anarchists, left-communists, Orthodox Marxists etc. More importantly, there was academic Marxism which wasn't revolutionary in its intention, which affected dozens of fields including history and sociology, and had factions too (e.g. Frankfurt School)

I should have been more clear. I meant Marxism that achieved real political power. My point is that Marx's original vision could never be carried out successfully in the real world. Your further comments don't really present an argument to the contrary.

<comment><USER15> I don't suppose you read my comment since its entirety was about how there is no such thing as "Marx's original vision". If there is no political vision, there cannot be "Marxism that achieved real political power" so your argument is categorically wrong. I challenge you to give me examples of Marx's original vision; from what I understand Marx made himself pretty clear that communism is not an ideology and thus there cannot be a "vision" of it, the action of communists would be different depending on material conditions they live in. You can talk about personal vision of Communist revolutionaries (e.g. Lenin) but I already wrote an excessively long paragraph about why this is not relevant to Marxism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Funny. Why you guys think China is Communists?

As a Chinese myself, in my eyes, the whole Communism thing is nothing more than a gimmick. A gimmick to keep public calm while the top heads fighting for domination at the back side of the TV camera and newspapers.

Ever heard of State capitalism?

<comment><USER18> I was checking out the Wiki for 21st century countries with "State Capitalism" and the list was - China, Singapore, Taiwan and Norway.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_capitalism#Current_forms...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_capitalism#Current_forms_in_the_21st_century)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Lovely, what a hole the party has dug itself into.

</comment><comment><USER20> These guys found a security hole in the system. They can combine communist ideology with any other issue. The ideology gives them shielding, so that they can push through the piggybacked issues more easily.

<comment><USER21> It occurs to me that his is a feature of any ideologically driven system. And the leadership may be playing the same game.

<comment><USER22> Yeah. It is called a cult.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > A communist scarf with print ads from a local Wanda branch has gone viral on > Chinese social media this weekend. "It's all about the money," some netizens > write. A locally issued red scarf, worn by the 'Young Pioneers of China' to > symbolize loyalty to communism, became the topic of great online controversy > this weekend. The red scarfs worn by students in Heze (菏泽), Shandong, came > with print advertising for Wanda, a Chinese multinational private real > estate developer.

> Photos of the print ad red scarfs, promoting a local branch of the Wanda > branch, went viral on September 29. The scarfs were worn by third-grade > students of the Danyanglu primary school. The scarfs were reportedly handed > out to the students in light of a road safety campaign on September 25. The > school board allegedly did not notice the advertisement.

[https://www.whatsonweibo.com/communist-blasphemy-red- scarf-w...](https://www.whatsonweibo.com/communist-blasphemy-red-scarf-with- wanda-advertisement-goes-viral/)

</comment><comment><USER24> There are too many of these things, There is no place for justice

</comment><comment><USER25> The Chinese "Communist" Party has learned an important lesson since the Cultural Revolution: idealistic young people create a bloody mess. China has a very long history of violent revolutions leading to extreme death tolls. It's why, I think, the CCP reacted so strongly at Tienanmen Square. Their thinking was, "Oh no, not another one of these!" And I'm not surprised that they still think that way.

</comment><comment><USER22> Really irks me when people talk about China in 1989 and only mention Tienamen Square. There were bodies piled outside of every major city in China...burning piles of bodies.

<comment><USER26> Source?

<comment><USER27> Not OP, but wonder if they are talking about the ongoing persecution of Christians [1], Uighurs (in Xinjiang) [2] and Falun Gong practitioners [3]

[1] Chinese officials burn bibles, destroy crosses and force Christians to renounce their faith [https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6149897/Group- Offic...](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6149897/Group-Officials- destroying-crosses-burning-bibles-China.html)

[2] China working to 'exterminate' Uighur people, detention facility eyewitness says [http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-28/china-working-to- elimi...](http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-28/china-working-to-eliminate- uighur-people-detention-camp-witness/10308286)

[3] Defining a Genocide [https://www.theepochtimes.com/defining-a- genocide_2624083.ht...](https://www.theepochtimes.com/defining-a- genocide_2624083.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Communism is a tool to rule China, so it can only be used by President Xi.

</comment><comment><USER29> How Ironic, that the current hybrid authoritarian China could be reset by Communists. Time for a new long march I suppose?

<comment><USER30> Someone should give Japan the memo.</comment></comment>


Why the Web Won't Be Nirvana (1995) - <AUTHOR> http://www.newsweek.com/clifford-stoll-why-web-wont-be-nirvana-185306 <comment><USER2> Very interesting to read through this now, especially considering some similarly-toned articles I've read recently about cryptocurrencies/blockchains/etc.</comment>


Proofiness - <AUTHOR> http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/29/the-dark-art-of-statistical-deception/ <comment><USER2> "causuistry," "randumbness" and "regression to the moon?"

I love his neologics.</comment>


Show HN: Extract a .app from the macOS Zoom Installer to Drag to /Applications - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/yig/af5bbb054bb9c4de39abc9156e6863e1 <comment><USER2> Sorry I'm out of the loop, why is there a need for this?

<comment><USER3> Zoom does a few shady things with your OS, like starting hidden webservers with code execution privileges, auto-updates, etc. I think this tries to remove those parts, and leave just the app itself.</comment></comment>


Writing the next chapter for Prismatic - <AUTHOR> http://blog.getprismatic.com/next-chapter/ <comment><USER2> The team at prismatic listened to our complaints about not being able to export our data:

> Update: You can also export the URLs of all your saved stories in CSV format > by first logging in to the webapp, and clicking "Export Stories" in the > drop-down menu next to your avatar in the left side panel.

Kudos for listening to the community, especially during what must be a difficult moment to go through.

</comment><comment><USER3> 9 days warning, recommendation to export data is to manually copy out the URLs or send them to pocket, individually. In a news reader app where you've possibly have viewed and archived hundreds or thousands of articles.

Another example of "don't trust startups with your data"

<comment><USER4> More accurately, don't put your data in someone else's cloud. It could be a lot worse. A company could sell your data when they shut down the product, and there's not much you can do about it. What happens in a few years when Slack is no longer a hot new thing, revenue slows, and another company buys them out because they'd really love to mine that awesome dataset.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Microsoft apparently wanted to buy them in March: [http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/01/prismatic-2/](http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/01/prismatic-2/)

Guess that didn't go as planned.

</comment><comment> michel-slm RIP Prismatic. Got into it from the Clojure community, and hoping they do well in their next endeavor -- and their libraries remain maintained esp. prismatic/schema !

</comment><comment><USER6> Love the work they open sourced in Clojure. Very sorry to see them go. I was a user of their app for awhile, but I tend to believe human led curation provides better signal to noise when it comes to content. It was a tremendous effort in trying to break that barrier and I'm thankful for all they contributed back!

</comment><comment><USER7> Going to miss these guys. They wrote some beautiful clojure.

</comment><comment><USER8> For those asking about exporting saved articles, I just found an "Export Stories" link on the web in the profile drop-down menu.

</comment><comment><USER9> Will miss Prismatic a lot, I use the app everyday. Anyone know of a similar app?

</comment><comment><USER2> They could at least offer automated exports of the links we've kept.

<comment><USER10> Yes, I agree. That feature shouldn't really be more than a few hours work.</comment></comment>


Was Someone Tipped Off to the LinkedIn Sale? - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/2016/06/13/linkedin-microsoft-insider-trading/ <comment><USER2> Guaranteed this is insider trading if its a small time investor.. I've traded plenty of options, and no small time guy would buy more than $135k at 160 strike when closing price was 131 and the price of the stock for the past few months went as low as $100 -- and a time window of 2 months until the option expires?? Extremely risky trade.. very very likely you would lose all of that $135k.. the most common thing with options that close in like 2-3 months is that the stock just stays close to the same value, so you wait a little while and the stock doesn't go anywhere up or down, so you just have to sell your options at a loss.. but as that window of time closes to a few weeks and you are way out of the money like 160 vs. 131, then your ability to sell that option gets worse and worse until finally you sell it at like a 75% loss. The 175 strike option is even more ridiculous.. 175 on 131... man.. extremely extremely speculative... unless those traders have a history of making really risky bets like that, then they are almost assuredly in the know of what was going to happen. My bet is that they either live near Microsoft or Linked in locations (Seattle or SV).. Also the reason they placed the bid in the last 5 minutes of trading is that there are various auto-traders out there that chase this kind of action.. if they see really unusual buying of out of money options (extremely risky), then they buy a little too thinking that somebody must know something and they profit also.. so if they bought these in the last 5 minutes of trading, then its possible the algorithm might not pick up on the trend so it reduces the number of people jumping in blindly into the trade.. so they make the spike smaller, but also isolate themselves.. extremely risky.. so I think somebody is giving that money back that they made....

<comment><USER3> According to traders who were cited in the article, the calls were part of an iron condor. An iron condor is an option strategy where you buy and short several options at once, and which speculates on LOW volatility. The 160 OTM call just happened to be the most profitable part of the strategy, but you shouldn't look at it in isolation from the other components.

Cited from theoptionsguide.com:

"The iron condor is a limited risk, non-directional option trading strategy that is designed to have a large probability of earning a small limited profit when the underlying security is perceived to have low volatility. The iron condor strategy can also be visualized as a combination of a bull put spread and a bear call spread.

Iron Condor Construction

Sell 1 OTM Put

Buy 1 OTM Put (Lower Strike)

Sell 1 OTM Call

Buy 1 OTM Call (Higher Strike)"

<comment><USER4> linkedin hasn't been a good candidate for low volatility. always possible that they thought it wouldn't move, but there are much less volatile stocks out there

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My understanding from dealing with this in a prior life is that the SEC will investigate these outliers as standard practice and 1) try to connect the dots between the buyers and any LNKD insiders, and 2) ask the buyers to show all of the due diligence and work product that went into deciding to make the trades. If you were the buyers and knew anyone with prior knowledge of the deal and couldn't document #2 in great depth then you are likely screwed. Presumably, anyone working in law or finance would know that this is standard practice and stay far away. Given how volatile LNKD's price has been over the last year, I could see these being legitimate trades (on the other hand, I actually took the other side of some Nov $160 covered calls and felt great about the hedge until this morning). Also keep in mind that these kinds of ''crazy'' trades are frequently placed as part of a larger more complex hedging strategy with net upside much lower than the numbers mentioned in the article.[1]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks_advance-k...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks_advance- knowledge_conspiracy_theories#Insider_trading)

<comment><USER6> A coworker told me that his brother once bought a large amount of stock in some company that had been down for a while because he "felt good about its future". He had (allegedly) no connection whatsoever to anyone in that company. The next day an announcement came out that the company was being acquired for a huge premium. Ended up having to deal with the SEC. He eventually came out in the clear, but it was still a huge hassle and caused him a lot of stress.

<comment><USER7> Sounds like a casino alright

<comment><USER8> Tell me, why did you bet on 00?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> All it would take is for someone in on the deal to be having dinner with an associate and saying just a little bit too much. The walls have ears when you're dealing with stuff like this.

<comment><USER10> When do insider trader laws kick in? I seem to remember that acting on information you overheard is legal; is being told info directly from the insider (if they don't benefit) also illegal?

<comment><USER11> Let's also recall that Congress is exempt: [http://www.forbes.com/sites/kylesmith/2011/06/01/insider- tra...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/kylesmith/2011/06/01/insider-trading- rules-that-dont-apply-to-congress/#689f82cef862)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wasn't there a big LinkedIn hack recently? Would it be ridiculous to think these two are related?

<comment><USER13> The hack was in 2012. The data recently went up for sale, dredging the hack back to the top of the news.

<comment><USER14> So to play devil's advocate, a relationship between the data leak and acquisition?

<comment><USER15> Why?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Buying an abnormally large amount of short dated, out-of-the-money options is a textbook (and extremely rookie) insider trading move.

<comment><USER17> I'm having a hard time knowing they are simply a rookie. They prices the options right and bought in the last five minutes, so they at least know the type of resistance they'd encounter from algos.

<comment><USER18> It's a rookie trade because they left a bulldozer trail of evidence behind.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I just want to add this bit of Finance Theory / Econ 101 to the mix, it's interesting:

Markets function better (or really, they function at all, it's the definition) when prices are what they should be.

Trading on insider information moves prices in the direction that they should be moving. The flaw in the pricing is due to the secret that's being kept, and the secret is being kept to protect insiders, not the public.

So, as a counter example to "the tragedy of the commons", trading on inside information is an example of positive externalities surrounding trades with negative "internalities".

</comment><comment><USER20> [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-13/anatomy- of...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-13/anatomy-of-linkedin- options-bet-that-probably-lost-money-chart)

another look at this trade thinks its part of a short vol trade - this kind of trades lose money when the price moves too much too fast.

the only way this structure would have made money if there was no announcement about anything - no announcement that there was an acq, or wasn't an acq, or there was any discussion about an acq at all.

</comment><comment><USER21> I really doubt it's someone in the banking or tech sector. Anyone with the a glancing familiarity with the stock market knows that's the easiest way to get caught.

<comment><USER22> That's why it seems more likely (to me) to be tech sector than finance. Nobody in finance would make this kind of move. A LinkedIn or Microsoft employee might.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Insider trading is NOT illegal; [http://cnbc.com/id/43471561](http://cnbc.com/id/43471561)

</comment><comment><USER24> What's really weird is that's way too small a profit to risk being flagged for insider trading.

<comment><USER25> Unless that's all you can afford

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Corruption and allegations of insider trading amongst the banking sector? Surely not! Who would have thought?

<comment><USER27> I think it is obvious that this trade did not originate from someone inside of the banking sector, else it would have been constructed in a "legal" way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> The linked in 2012 breach started getting posted everywhere in weeks previous with high visibility. I don't believe it to be related, but I am sure someone may.</comment>


Guy Steele Interviews John McCarthy, Father of Lisp (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoq.com/news/2009/04/Steele-Interviews-John-McCarthy

<comment><USER2> I heard "This is Guy Steele standing in for Alan Kay", and I thought it was an obscure joke. I felt exceedingly nerdy for getting the joke. Then I realized it wasn't a joke at all.

I still feel exceedingly nerdy.

</comment><comment><USER3> Terrible audio, wish I could bear it though. Really wanted to listen.

<comment><USER4> There's a full, though poor quality, transcript. That's what I ended up using.</comment></comment>


As Customers Seek Privacy, AeroFS Emerges With Stealthy File Sharing Software - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2013/11/22/as-customers-seek-privacy-aerofs-emerges-with-stealthy-file-sharing-software/

<comment><USER2> I want to quickly distinguish our Hybrid Cloud offering from our Private Cloud offering since I thinks this may keep coming up in this thread.

In the Hybrid Cloud offering (this is our 'classic' or previous offering that's been available for quite some time) we don't store any data on our servers. However, because some communication does happen with our servers (e.g. for registration), we heard from businesses and enterprises that they would like a completely on-prem solution to guarantee no data goes to our servers.

This completely on-prem solution is the AeroFS Private Cloud. It's a virtual machine that is packaged as either an OpenStack image or an OVF/OVA file (supporting VMWare/Virtualbox), and in this VM absolutely no communication happens with our servers, period.

(and you can easily verify that)

<comment><USER3> I'm curious how you can make money on selling software as an appliance, and guarantee that a customer won't just replicate the system to have more servers?

<comment><USER4> As the other reply said, to a certain extent you have to trust your customers. Big companies don't want to be exposed to liability - I know of a large organization that accidentally skimped on their license accounting for a database product (not Oracle) and got handed a $40m bill. They negotiated it down from there, but still, people lose their jobs over things like that.

Along those lines, the contracts that customers sign should always include a clause that says you have the right to audit them if you believe they are not in compliance. Typically, you don't want to do that unless you absolutely have to, but it can be a useful tool when renegotiating enterprise "all-you-can- eat" support contracts.

Still, there's technical stuff you can do. Log the IP address, hostname, hostid, mac address, and so on into your logs on startup. Then, when a customer submits a support case and uploads log files, store that info somewhere. Or create a "support package" that includes anonymous usage data and ask customers to upload.

But the absolute last thing you want to do is deal with licenses and keys and hard limitations. All you'll do is piss off your customers when they hit their hard limit under a deadline at Friday at 4pm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> AeroFS is not open source.. and really in this climate we can't say it is going to guarantee privacy.

(This does not mean that OSS guarantees privacy, it is just a necessary condition.)

<comment><USER2> Actually, with our Private Cloud offering you pretty well can guarantee privacy by simply firewalling the virtual appliance from the rest of the world, if you would like to :)

Feel free to sign up and packet inspect the traffic!

<comment><USER6> It's a nice way to alleviate the barrier to monetization that open-source-as- security poses. In short, instead of having lamdba user trusting 'the community' for security audits, now each user has to implement security measures.

This leaves users holding the bag. Well, it should work for you but remains subpar.

Congrats nonetheless.

<comment><USER7> In my experience "the community" cannot be trusted for security audits, as far as most FLOSS goes. In fact if a program can be "made secure" by _yourself_ just by firewalling it properly, I'd be more inclined to trust that measure over any FLOSS community audit.

Having said that, the idea of running software I mistrust so much that I _have_ _to_ firewall it on my network is unacceptable.

<comment><USER6> I agree wrt security-through-community and its weaknesses. And indeed turning your guns inwards seems like the wrong move.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What interest me at the moment, as someone who builds a web application without any user management or storage (i.e. purely to integrate which other storage solutions), is how to integrate with solutions like this behind the firewall.

I get asked this question probably 10-15 times a month and the rate is growing. The problem is that without there being a common solution that application vendors can share, they all seem to end up implementing something custom and that looks a complete mess.

Anyone know of any inside-firewall storage solution that implements something like this, or is the best available solution LDAP + WebDav and do the rest yourself?

</comment><comment><USER9> I've been using AeroFS for over a year now and its fantastic.

I switched from Dropbox to Aero for all my home computers (of which I have Windows and Linux desktops and Mac laptops) and the unlimited storage (as much as your home computers can hold) is great. Plus the files are only synced within your own computers so security/privacy is much better than uploading all your files to a public service like Dropbox.

The only negative as compared to Dropbox is that their client is not as efficient (it's Java based and takes a bit more resources than Dropbox).

<comment><USER10> Did u look into Tonido or owncloud before deciding on this? Curious to know your take on them.

<comment><USER9> I was looking for a fast file syncing solution that worked on Win/Mac/Lin and didn't really need any GUI or web interface for my files like those 2 services seem to focus on.

Also Tonido has a 2GB limit on their free plan whereas AeroFS lets me sync as much files as I have storage space on my computers (so literally hundreds of GB).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Anyone know of a simple comparison chart with the many options available now? (eg- AeroFS/BTSync/SpiderOak/Mega/Bitcasa/Cubby/Younited/Dropbox)

</comment><comment><USER12> Not sure if others agree, but I think these "privacy"\- centered alternatives to "cloud" need to be open source to be taken seriously.

Now that is only my opinion - and I am not in sales. But in my view, you cannot pitch a privacy solution honestly without disclosing the architecture of your proposed system, and the only practical way for anyone to verify that architecture and your implementation is going to protect privacy is to look at the source code.

Of course, you can pitch a solution and be less than 100% transparent about how it works. And this may be enough to make sales. But there's no way for the customer to really know if you're being honest unless they, or their trusted agent, can read and compile the source code.

Assuming there are open source alternatives to "cloud" (e.g. peer-to-peer architectures), then maybe there is a market for "privacy consulting" where customers pay consulting fees for the know-how to use open source alternatives to construct data transfer and storage systems that can deliver a level of privacy that the "cloud" architecture cannot. I don't know. I'm just thinking out loud.

Anyway, it's good to hear WSJ saying customers are seeking privacy. The market will no doubt respond.

<comment><USER13> You don't think even their "Private Cloud" solution is sufficient for a security-conscious customer?

<comment><USER12> Do you have a link to a tarball for "Private Cloud"? Then I'll tell you what I think.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'd rather see proper home-hosted solutions - a nice turnkey OwnCloud/IMAP/webmail box. The problem is that devices like this would also have to act as your wifi router to get proper turnkey user-friendly behavior.

<comment><USER15> ArkOS is worth a look

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> So, if you use the Hybrid Cloud version, does all syncing have to go through the AeroFS servers, or can machines on the same LAN sync directly to each other?

<comment><USER2> Machines can sync directly in most cases (especially on the LAN, and even over the Internet). If, for some reason, communication cannot be established directly between machines, a relay server is used, but the traffic is encrypted end-to-end between the devices, so the relay server cannot decrypt it or MITM it.

Take a look here[1] for the security spec

[1] [https://www.aerofs.com/security/spec](https://www.aerofs.com/security/spec)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've been watching AeroFS for quite a while. How does it compare to Citrix ShareFile? It sounds like they are both in the same problem space.

</comment><comment><USER17> Customers who seek privacy won't find it in the cloud. If they want to keep their stuff private, they should keep them for themselves.

<comment><USER18> Why? You can have both. Encrypt everything before uploading, decrypt on download (and I don't mean SSL, I mean client encrypts, sends _encrypted data_ over SSL, data is stored encrypted, only decrypted by client).

Data is kept private _and_ data is in the cloud.

<comment><USER19> > _You can have both. Encrypt everything before uploading, decrypt on download > (and I don 't mean SSL, I mean client encrypts, sends encrypted data over > SSL, data is stored encrypted, only decrypted by client)._

Yep, client-side encryption is the only working solution.

The funky bit is that on Linux you can make this fully transparent at the OS level. Expose remote storage via iSCSI, and attach to it so the storage shows up as a block device on your client system. Then put regular on-disk ("partition level") encryption on top of the blockdevice using cryptsetup, and that's it. All storage data sent over the wire is now encrypted, and the crypto mapping layer takes care of hiding the gritty details.

Because the encryption happens beneath the filesystem layer, all the usual tools work as before. For them the only difference is the latency. (Network connection naturally causes an upper bound that is way lower than a local drive.) Works wonderfully for backups, where you want to do incrementals in any case. Just ship rdiff deltas and have a backup tool which takes care of the work.

I actually implemented this as my Master's thesis back in 2006, only to be informed later on that logically identical construct had been shown as early as 2003.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> What does this give me that I couldn't build with rsync?

I'm not challenging it, just wondering.

<comment><USER21> Imagine if rsync was called automatically after every single time a file was changed. And that rsync was done in a mesh, with all of your clients getting synced simultaneously and almost-instantly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Congrats on the WSJ article.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm getting "404: Page Not Found"..

<comment><USER2> seems like the WSJ site is having intermittent problems. It looks like the article is back now</comment></comment>


Cloud Drive: Unlimited photo storage $12/year. Unlimited Everything $60/year - <AUTHOR> http://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/unlimited/?_encoding=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=ur2&tag=wikiroom-20&linkId=KPETO6BE5ZKGJDLX

<comment><USER2> I'm not in love with the app or the picture management on the website but Flickr currently offers 1TB of photo storage at no cost..

[https://www.flickr.com/#section-4](https://www.flickr.com/#section-4)

My biggest annoyance with Flickr is that it doesn't treat RAW files as photos.. I wonder if Amazon will?

</comment><comment><USER3> Time to use steganography([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography)) to store data in the photos :)?</comment>


Ask HN: Create text and still image slideshow from YouTube video - <AUTHOR> This falls under the category of "Surely someone has done this?"
I absolutely loathe watching video tutorials. YouTube has automatic speech to text captions and extracting these is fairly easy.
But they lack context. It occurred to me that you could also extract significant video frames (i.e. a camera cut) and combine these with the captions to get a fairly serviceable image and text version of many coding tutorials.
Does this already exist? <comment><USER2> If it's not discoverable or accessible, then effectively it does not exist. Or if it does, there's room for a discoverable/accessible alternative.</comment>


R17 on spinning disk faster than PostgreSQL on SSD - <AUTHOR> http://www.rseventeen.com/blog/bakeoff_part_2_mysql_postgresql_r17.html

<comment><USER2> This benchmark is probably accurate, but not necessarily fair. Here's why:

If all the systems have to do a table scan (complete scan of the data), then you're (almost always) I/O bound. Because we're relying on sequential I/O, a good hard disk is as good as a consumer-grade SSD. Postgresql doesn't do compression (if rows fit on a single page), and MySQL doesn't by default either (though you can enable InnoDB page compression), so if you're using compression with r17 you can get more rows per MB transferred, so you win.

However, this only works if you're doing table scans on highly compressible data. The minute you compete against an index, I suspect you're going to lose heavily (e.g. selecting the number of hits by second over a one minute interval should be very fast on the relational databases, as they should be able to answer from the index)

MySQL and PostgreSQL are really OLTP databases, but you're running an OLAP workload here (multi-minute queries and table scans are essentially the definition of OLAP). As you say, a comparison against Hadoop is probably more relevant (as long as you compress the data). For this workload, an OLAP database is the tool to beat, and Hadoop is probably the leading contender in the open-source OLAP space.

Though I'd normally bet on PostgreSQL, I think the easiest fix is to turn on Innodb compression in MySQL: you should see query times that are much more comparable. You'd probably still win (because MySQL is doing a lot more), but the margin should be much smaller.

I think it's also possible to denormalize your tables and improve your indexing, so that we can avoid table scans and then PostgreSQL/MySQL should be much faster, but I don't think this is really the point of your benchmark.

Edit: Just spotted a (much bigger) problem - if your data is 54GB raw, when compressed that should be within the memory size of your machine (12GB), but if MySQL and PostgreSQL aren't compressing their data won't fit into memory (particularly with all those unused indexes). So in fact you're comparing RAM speeds to SSD speeds, which really isn't apples to apples.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for taking the time to look over the tests in such detail!

MySQL's EXPLAIN output says that it's using the indexes. PostgreSQL's EXPLAIN output says that it's _not_ (and from what I can tell so far, this is a deliberate design decision by PostgreSQL developers). r17 "loses" to MySQL on one query and "wins" on the other. So I agree that r17 has a much harder job competing against indexed data...but with r17 you didn't have to wait to create the index....not such a big deal for OLTP, a much bigger deal with OLAP.

I would like to redo the bakeoff(s) with compressed InnoDB tables but as they can take several days to run and life is short, first I should focus on Hadoop as we both agree that is more relevant.

Re the data size issue: the 54GB raw data set compresses to 28GB. The data generator I use creates data that's more random than the "real world" and so doesn't compress very well...makes life harder for r17, which is what I want. The smaller data set for the SSD test compresses to about 13GB, which isn't ideal I agree...I should have bought a larger SSD, I didn't think that MySQL would make so many large temporary files :). To mitigate this issue I ensured that the data set was _not_ cached before I ran the r17 script.

I am very keen to find out the truth about r17's usefulness, thanks for your part in that. For the next bakeoff I'll provide more details about methods and machine behavior.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This fails at the most basic benchmark rules. Do you really think PostgreSQL is 20-40x slower than alternative implementations? Do you think that is reasonable?

I'm going to go ahead and assume (as with most benchmarks) that the PostgreSQL instance was not configured properly and was running a stock configuration.

<comment><AUTHOR> [re fail] my main goal is to find out if r17 is "generally useful" for other people doing data mining, _not_ to pull the wool over any eyes. What would you like to see done differently? I am very happy to redo the comparison...or better yet, help someone else to redo it and satisfy themselves (or not) of r17's usefulness.

[re reasonableness PostgreSQL being 20-40x slower] Yes, but only at some things. In the first bakeoff ([http://www.rseventeen.com/blog/bakeoff_part_1_mysql_postgres...](http://www.rseventeen.com/blog/bakeoff_part_1_mysql_postgresql_r17.html)) PostgreSQL was clearly "better" than MySQL. And r17 can't do transactions and is useless for anything "on line", which is where PostgreSQL really shines. (As commented below) next up I'll be baking off against Hadoop, which is a more apples<->apples comparison.

[re misconfiguration] is there a specific configuration that you would prefer that I use? I'm also happy to show the EXPLAIN output if that would help.

<comment><USER4> In default configuration for mysql and postgresql daemons, these benchmarks don't do anything to make full use of the hardware cited.

Here are guides for the respective db configs.

<http://www.revsys.com/writings/postgresql-performance.html>

[http://www.mysqlperformanceblog.com/2006/09/29/what-to- tune-...](http://www.mysqlperformanceblog.com/2006/09/29/what-to-tune-in- mysql-server-after-installation/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> R17 is a data mining language that's a cross between SQL and Bash. For example this

SELECT username, COUNT(1) AS num FROM users GROUP BY username ORDER BY num;

is roughly equivalent to

io.file.read('users') | rel.select(username) | rel.group(count) | rel.order_by(_count);

The most interesting difference is that each r17 clause executes concurrently :).

Download link is here: <http://www.rseventeen.com/#download>

<comment><USER5> At first glance it looks like doing a query involves streaming the entire dataset into memory while selecting and projecting on the fly. If that's true, what happens when you have truly massive rows (i.e., things containing MEDIUMTEXTs or worse)?

Okay, reading further down you only get very basic data types. Still, nothing in the spec appears to prohibit very long rows, and I'd imagine performance starts to fall off once you're throwing around tens of kilobytes per row. Any plans to support pushing the projection operation into the read phase so you can work with massive individual records?

And where's the source? I want to see exactly how much this differs from a modern SQL engine.

<comment><AUTHOR> It streams the dataset into memory 256K (more for longer rows) at a time. It doesn't load the whole dataset into RAM unless it must eg for a join, sort or grouping.

I don't currently have plans to push projection into the read phase, but the phases are all pretty close together :) so maybe it wouldn't be required. How massive is "massive" for you? 10s of K? Megs?

R17 is not currently open source, but I haven't ruled it out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think it's disingenuous to measure load+index+query time and then declare that you're faster. Not saying there aren't use cases where that's valuable (analytics/warehousing db for one) but it's not what most people are looking for. Is this usable as a transactional store? What do those numbers look like?

The pipeline model is very interesting, though, and I'll take a look for our warehouse, which at some point became too expensive to keep up with.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree that it would be disingenuous to base "faster" on load+index+query. I'm basing it on the query times alone. I would like very much to base it on load+index+query 'cause then I could have said "faster than MySQL and PostgreSQL" :) [and probably many systems, since r17 is built specifically for zero indexing overhead].

R17 is _only_ for analytics & warehousing, it doesn't do transactions at all. So in that sense this comparison is unfair, which is why next up I want to do the same comparison with Hadoop.

Thanks for taking a closer look for your warehouse! Please contact me directly or comment somewhere if you'd like any help from me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Boosting speed, fantastic - replacing the completely easy and logical SQL language, not so much:

       io.file.read('users') | rel.select(username) | rel.group(count) | rel.order_by(_count);

is

        SELECT username, COUNT(1) AS num FROM users GROUP BY username ORDER BY num;

seriously? why?

<comment><AUTHOR> I hear you, and I would have preferred to use the SQL (or any other well- understood) syntax. Some of the reasons are:

1) I want the query writer to be in complete control over what happens first, rather than a query optimizer. The r17 syntax makes this explicit.

2) Similarly, I want it to be clear which things will be executed in parallel and which won't.

3) I agree that SQL is "completely easy and logical" if your query is small but for large SQL queries I find that I need to understand the query as one big mass. With r17 you can take it one clause at a time. It's a bit like a stack-based language in this respect. You can keep adding clauses at the end of a pipeline, eg WHERE (or even multiple WHEREs) can come after a GROUP BY, ORDER BY etc...contrast this with SQL's need for a special HAVING clause.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> what configurations were used for the mysql and postgres daemons?

</comment><comment><USER8> That's great but does it beat SSAS? Does it beat LINQ?

It seems that the primary competitors to r17 would be K/Q,LINQ,Powershell,and possibly SSAS (unsure how much statistical power is in r17).

<comment><AUTHOR> r17 doesn't run on Windows, and I don't have any plans to make it work on Windows at this time.

Apart from that niggle, I agree...more bakeoffs needed. There's not much statistical power in r17, it's more a brute force thing. If you want more finesse the idea is to hand off to a fancier (and most likely slower) language like R.</comment></comment>


Thoughts on the current state of sync - <AUTHOR> http://www.cgpgrey.com/blog/thoughts-on-the-current-state-of-sync

<comment><USER2> I'm surprised the obvious solution is not mentioned. That is, the apps should queue up their changes in a system-wide log (the format of this log is left as an exercise for the reader) and the OS must play this log as and when it finds opportunity and/or driven by user defined rules (like the "midnight sync" rule mentioned in the post). This means that only one process (the system sync'r process) will ever do the syncs. This scheme also allows for more advanced features like user-defined priorities on which syncs are most critical (e.g, my calender entries take precedence over the "read it later" list I might have created in my browser).</comment>


Ask HN: How do you monitor server logs - <AUTHOR> How do you do it ? For example, if you have apache running on Ubuntu, you can go into command line and do a grep or even tail -f /var/log/apache2/access.log<p>What simple tools/services are out there to monitor stuff like this ? Realtime is an added-bonus. <comment><USER2> [https://www.splunk.com/en_us/solutions/solution-areas/log- ma...](https://www.splunk.com/en_us/solutions/solution-areas/log- management.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> There are many ways, icinga and check_mk have logwatch module to alert on messages matching a regex.

Log aggregation can be done with file beat (logstash) with kibana as frontend. Then there is sentry (python) for logs.

</comment><comment><USER4> Check out [https://papertrailapp.com/](https://papertrailapp.com/)

<comment><USER2> this looks legit, what is your experience like with it so far?</comment></comment>


Truth: how great a virtue is it in business? - <AUTHOR> http://foundread.com/2007/10/23/truth-how-great-a-virtue-is-it-business/ <comment><USER2> The article is based on analyzing a birthdate lie on a public forum. I actually always "lie" about my age on public forums where that information can be seen to avoid identity theft. A birthday is a key piece of information for identity thieves.</comment>